jonwashburn

ActiveRain moves fast.  So fast that I know of only a few people who really have a clear picture of everything that ActiveRain has to offer.  AR is now averaging a site upgrade at least once a week.  To put that in proper context, most software companies are on a quarterly or 1/2 yearly deployment schedule. 

We've done five separate deploys in the last 10 days alone, so I thought it would be beneficial to do a high level overview of the different products and services available on ActiveRain, while focusing on our core business components.

1. Blogging:  There is a major shift from the traditional way real estate is marketed and blogging represents this new paradigms epicenter.

In the past advertising options included post cards and newspaper advertising with canned messages, listing magazines with latent information, nothing that provided any real testament to who the real estate professional really is.   ActiveRain continues to evolve a social media publishing (or blog) platform where real estate professionals can share their expertise and knowledge while creating a conversation with potential clients.

Our blogging platform will focus on empowering our members to syndicate their data to as many consumers as possible, involving integration with other highly trafficked sites.  Some of the sites I would like to see us work close with this year include: the major real estate brokerages, Zillow, Trulia, Yahoo, and Microsoft.  

(This feature of ActiveRain is Free)

2. Referral Exchange: Best ActiveRain resource that you haven't heard of. 

The basic premise behind the Referral Exchange is, you guessed it, a marketplace where real estate professionals can exchange referrals with ease and efficiency.  We launched it over a year ago without much fanfare as a fix for the frustration I experienced when needing to personally refer business out of state.  Finding a hard working and appreciative professional was a lot harder than it should have been.  The Exchange recently reappeared on my radar after I heard a series of fantastic success stories.

Using the Referral Exchange is simple and free.

Once a referral is added to the system an email is sent to all members on ActiveRain that have an alert set up that matches the parameters of the referral.  New members are setup with a basic referral alert at registration.  To change your alert settings click here

(This feature of ActiveRain is Free)

In the next few months we plan to implement a new element to the Referral Exchange product that will require all outbound referrals to be screened before it hits the board to eliminate any spam.

3. Profile:  You don't get a second chance to make a first impression...

For those who don't believe in the power of the ActiveRain profile, take a moment and Google your name.  Unless it's Brad Pitt, (or you've been on ActiveRain for just a short while) you will likely find your ActiveRain profile on Page 1 of your search results.  And even if it doesn't show up on page 1, it's information that consumers are highly interested in.  Take time to make your profile read and look beautiful.  When I practiced real estate I always considered myself unemployed and on a never-ending quest to find a new job. Your profile is your resume. Treat it with the respect it deserves. 

(This feature of ActiveRain is Free)

4. Individual & Team Blogs: Almost 10 years ago I created the first Search Engine Optimized IDX website that used listing content to generate long tail search results.  This innovation eventually allowed my team of real estate agents to generate over 5,000 leads a month and sell well over $100 million dollars in real estate a year. 

I believe our new ActiveBlogs are as powerful today as my SEO IDX website was back when I first created it. If used correctly, ActiveBlogs have the potential to revolutionize personal, team, office, and/or niche real estate production.  

The core value proposition of our blogs is an infrastructure that we call RAIndexing, or "Real Area Indexing".   Simply put, your blog turns into a long tail Search Engine Optimized website. Similar in nature to the SEO IDX website, the primary difference being the IDX website uses static listing content whereas ActiveBlogs utilize much more potent unique, fresh content.

We have a giant office whiteboard full of improvements that will continuously be released for the ActiveBlog platform.  For example, we just added the ability for people to add a Listing Router search widget to ActiveBlogs. In the next few weeks look for "New Theme Friday's", and a widget integration.  To sign up for an ActiveBlog click here.  

(ActiveBlogs cost $19/mo and $79/mo for an Individual and Team license respectively)

5. Localism: Localism is designed to be the worlds most complete Neighborpedia. 

Members may sponsor communities, cities and even sub-divisions on Localism.  The concept is based on a verb we call "localised", which is the process of adding location based meta-data to content, whether it be text, pictures or video.  The website is designed to exclusively feature 'hyper-local' real estate information for consumers.  Focused hyper-local content from an established and trusted website ranks inherently high on search engine result pages, like Google

Localism thus becomes a powerful resource for real estate professionals because it allows them to leverage their very local knowledge of a given area to potential clients that otherwise wouldn't know about unless they visited the area personally with a seasoned guide in tow. 

The long overdue feature of making Localism open for consumer and local merchant contribution is scheduled on our internal project board for completion in the next 30 days.  Relative content from local neighbors and businesses coupled with real estate professionals knowledge and expertise will benefit all participants, providing an engaging and comprehensive experience.  I'm confident that the sponsoring professional will reap the substantial rewards Localism was meant to provide from conception.

(Localism sponsorships are less than $10/mo per sponsorship.  Price breaks are available with multiple sponsorships)

6. Listing Router: Leads are dead; 2009 is all about the "click".

Early in the decade well-funded companies utilized marketing budgets and technology that was largely out of reach to individual real estate professionals to generate huge quantities of 'leads' at a much lower cost than an individual was able to.  Many real estate professionals felt that they got burned by these lead generation companies as a result of excessive long term contracts and poor conversion rates.  As a result the concept of buying a lead conjures up a foul taste for most practitioners in the industry. 

Today, many of these lead capture technologies have become cost effective and subsequently made their way into the hands of individual practitioners.  As these points have crossed, a fast growing alternative to 'lead reselling' has manifested called click marketing.  Our entrance into this field is a product we call Listing Router.  Foundationally Listing Router is very simple: ActiveRain members can buy clicks from ActiveRain consumer traffic and route them to specific locations (web-pages) of their choice.  We've taken a novel approaches with Listing Router by sharing a portion of the click revenue with the member who's post and content drove the traffic.

In the future we hope to become the central market place where real estate professionals buy clicks, and Search Engine Marketers sell clicks.  To set up your Listing Router account click here.

(Clicks range in price from $.89 to $3.89 per click.  AR members with high point total are automatically given discounts on the per click price.)

Bonus: Spellcheck: This has been the cause of almost as much headache to ActiveRain members as has been the dreaded Proxy Errors. In the future we plan to add the words: blog, Localism, Raindex, and ActiveRain, to our dictionary.  It irritates us as well.  For some reason this is not an easy technical fix.

For years I've been a believer that it was best to "Work smart so you don't have to work hard". 

Lenn,

I am sorry to hear that you've been unsuccessful in your endeavors to not have to work hard. Obviously you are extremely successful, but even after all of your success you are still one of the hardest working people I know.  Surely if you were as smart as you are a hard worker, you would be one of the smartest people in the world. Any observant person can see that you are one of the hardest working.

Let's take a look:

1. You are in the top .001% of top point earners on ActiveRain.  In fact you are #1 out of over 100k people.  It takes a lot of work to achieve at that level.

2. You are up bright and early, 6AM, writing a blog post on ActiveRain.  You are an SEO maven and know that blogging on ActiveRain is one element of work that generates SEO results. You would be surprised how few people start work at 6am. I would bet hard cash that you don't clock out at 5pm either.  We're talking 12 hour days and 60 hour weeks.  Definitely hard work.

3. You generate a ton of buyers on your website homefinders.com.  Now a smart person would just sell or refer those leads outright.  But you take the extra work to speak to nearly every prospect and set them up as slam dunks for your referral agents.

4. You registered homefinders.com in 1995 and have doggedly stuck with it for over a decade. I bet the first few years were lean. Lots of hard work investing in the internet when the smart money was on telemarketing.

5. I also understand that you programmed most of your website. I'm guessing that you don't have any formal training as a computer programmer, but you needed it programmed so you just did it.  Doing the dirty work that you should have just outsourced allowed you to learn first hand how to increase your SEO. How's that SEO knowledge working out for you now?

The most successful people in nearly every industry are not so smart.  To rise to the top you need to do things differently than all of the other smart people.  You need to take risks that smart people think are ludicrous. You are a top producer now, but don't forget what it took to get there. You are doing our members a great disservice if you tell them that becoming great is going to be possible without an extra helping of stupid-hard work.

It is a great deficit to start with. Being smart, or God forbid "extremely talented", has to be one of the single greatest impediments to becoming successful in real estate.

No, it's not that real estate is a special field; there are in fact only a few highly specialized fields where brains end up doing more good than harm. For example, it is good if you want to be a rocket scientist, university professor, doctor, or consultant. In pretty much any other field it just gets in the way. Here's why:

1. Smart people use their brains to make the right decision:

People with massive brain power usually know that they are smart so when it comes time to make a decision on something, they tap into their giftings to evaluate and deliberate what the right course of action should be.  Sometimes this process can take days or even weeks.  The really, really smart people usually take the longest to figure out which way to go, sometimes even months. 

Its true that smart people usually don't make a lot of mistakes. They rarely lose a lot of money on a stupid marketing investment, or expend a lot of energy running down the wrong path. In fact they rarely run anywhere; instead they move cautiously.

The dumb people just move.  They don't know no better. They know that even if they took the time to try to figure out the right way to go they'd probably just screw it up anyways, so they just save the time and simply go. The nice thing about just going is that you can do it at any time. All you need to do is get out of your own way.  

2. Smart people rely on their brains to limit the amount of work they need to do:

When you are smart you can usually a figure out a way to do whatever needs to be done more efficiently than dumb people. In fact really smart people usually can figure out a way to get somebody else to do the work for them. When the smart person succeeds at getting someone else to do their work for them, they usually benefit in the short run but not in the long run. By offloading their work, they lose the experience, and confidence that an accomplishment would have built.

Dumb people don't realize that there is any other way to doing something than to just do it.  So they do.

3. Smart people fear looking dumb:

People put a lot of expectations on smart people. If a smart person does something dumb they will usually get chastised, so they learn early on to not screw up.  Dumb people don't have that same pressure.  They are free to mess up as much as it takes to figure something out.  This freedom to screw up is key to learning and succeeding.  Just look at children and compare them to a smart adult in how quickly they can learn something new.  Children, like the dumb person, give themselves the freedom to fail.

4. Smart people count on good ideas to become successful:

Smart people think. They think, then they sometimes come upon a good idea. Smart people know that good ideas are not that easy to come by so they carefully guard that idea to make sure no one steals it.  Dumb people know that they are not going to come up with a good idea so they don't even try.  Instead dumb people spend their time doing.

Closing message to dumb people: The good news is that being dumb comes naturally to you.  There isn't a lot of advice that you need; just keep on going.

Closing message to the gifted ones: Just because you were born with brains does not mean that you cannot be successful; you will just have to work harder than others. When your first reaction is to deliberate the merits of your choices: don't. Learn to go with your gut.  Over time you will be able to develop your gut instinct into a finely tuned insturment.  Know that your smarts will not make you successful. The most important thing to success is giving a little more than everyone else.  The dumb guy knows this inherently; he knows that for him to get even the littlest bit of success he will need to work 2x as hard as the next guy. If this post struck a cord with you and you are thinking that you are going to act more and think less, start now. Seriously, pick up the phone, knock on some doors, do something and don't stop doing it.

I just stumbled upon the comment above that was a part of a post where people were debating the returns on various online real estate websites.  I have heard the sentiments of the comment above numerous times since founding ActiveRain. Because of the rich professional-to-professional networking that happens everyday on ActiveRain some people dismiss the great consumer reach of the site.  This is likely our fault as we tend not to toot our own horn regarding our accomplishments. As a result we have done a poor job educating the industry as to the power inherent in ActiveRain to connect real estate professionals with consumers.

I track our traffic numbers on a daily basis. It's a borderline obsession for me. When you've built websites your whole adult life, this tends to happen. For example, I know that yesterday was our second highest number of visitors ever to the site. 88% of our visitors on a monthly basis come from search engines or referral from other sites. These are potential clients doing search queries that are leading them to your posts.

But the stat that jumps out at me that lets me know ActiveRain is MUCH MORE than 'primarily a peer-to-peer platform' is this: the number of members on our site is quite a bit less than 10% of our unique visitors per month. That means there are over 9 consumers hitting the site for every one member.........and when you factor in how many of our members are actually contributing content, that number gets even higher.

As I was getting ready to write this post, I did some additional research and found the graph below that compares ActiveRain's traffic with other "big boys" of our industry: ColdwellBanker.com, REMAX.com, Century21.com, and KW.com.  It is exciting for me to note that we started off one year ago in 5th place (out of 5) in this group and now we are ranking in 2nd place with almost a 200% yearly growth rate.

Our network is being plagued by cut and paste content! So today we hired a new team member. Let me introduce you to Harlen 'The Copyright Crusader'.

We are a community of PROFESSIONALS! 99% of you understand that. Harlen has been brought on to ensure that  the 1% who are bringing the rest of us down are dealt with. He has assured us that his relentless pursuit of justice for the holders of copyright protection will be unmatched. He has guaranteed to crush copyright infringement in 30 days or we don't have to pay him (can't beat that). How you might ask? well............

Every time you submit a post on Activerain you see this:

Some of you choose to ignore it. Some of you think that since you have gotten away with it before, you will continue to get away with it. You will not. Today, on his first day on the job, Harlen suspended the accounts of four members who had previously been warned about this type of behavior. One member had over 150,000 points. That's a lot of time wasted copying content and trying to pass it off as your own. Please, Harlen implores you, do not be the next person this happens to. He will be hunting content to the far and wide reaches of the network and running that content in Google to find the original author.

If you see someone copying content, leave a link to this post in their comment section. Warn them about Harlen and his 'Copyright Crusade'. Because if Harlen sees it before it's pulled down, the first offense will be a two week suspension. No questions asked. (Harlen thinks this is really lenient. Read that image above again.......it says "Posting copyrighted material without permission WILL result in being removed from ActiveRain")

The second time will be a ban from the network. Harlen has guaranteed this garbage will STOP!!! Plagiarism is polluting a network that thousands of people have poured their heart and soul in to making stellar. Harlen promises you that plagiarizers will no longer leave their mark on ActiveRain.

We have something very special here at ActiveRain. Your participation here is not a right, it is a privilege. By abusing that priviledge you are making yourself, and more importantly, the rest of ActiveRain look very unprofessional. Our community guidelines say: ActiveRain is a place where real estate professionals can network with their peers and discuss industry insider topics. It is also a public forum where consumers can pull back the curtain and see what the real estate industry is really about.

Do we really want consumers pulling back that curtain and seeing plagiarism, stealing and dishonest gaming? Harlen does not!!! Harlen believes that we all learned about plagiarism in elementary school. He remembers his fifth grade teacher Mrs. Robinson sending him to the principals office when he copied a passage from Marcus Valerius Martial without citing it:

"Why, simpleton, do you mix your verses with mine? What have you to do, foolish man, with writings that convict you of theft? Why do you attempt to associate foxes with lions, and make owls pass for eagles? Though you had one of Ladas's legs, you would not be able, blockhead, to run with the other leg of wood." - Marcus Valerius Martial

Here is a great resource for what you can and can't do: The wise advice of Lenn Harley

(This is not a joke, even though it is kind of funny)

"What do they want to see on websites?  61% wanted multiple pictures and a slide show; followed by maps and directions; agent contact information, virtual tours and neighborhood profiles. "

Why doesn't someone just make a simple home listing site that has just those features?

So after an all night-marathon development session we are finally ready and happy to announce ActiveRain's newest addition: Channels & Topics.

For an overview of what Channels and Topics are check out this post by Brad Andersohn: "How to Use ActiveRain Channels"

Although the content being displayed today in most of the Topics and some of the Channels is sparce and even somewhat confusing, we have great plans for what we believe Channels and Topics will grow into over the next few months. More immediately (tomorrow night) we will put live a few extra design finishes on the home, channel, and topic pages to help make it clearer. (We recognize that some of the design elements are not displaying properly and as a result are making it difficult to navigate through the channels and the topics.

Here is a partial list of the changes we've made:

1. Rearranged the layout on the ActiveRain home page. Most notably, we removed all advertising on this page, added Channel and Topic Navigation, and provided greater prominence to the featured articles. (Within the next few days we expect to have posts from people our members subscribed to show up in the list.)

2. We removed the ActiveRain logo from the header area on pages optimized by the ActiveRain Customizer.

3. Featured Members are now displaying on the city level for logged in users.  We play to make it display this way for non-logged in users soon.

Please check out the changes and let us know your opinion on this blog post.  Our company philosophy is to release site upgrades as fast as reasonable and then look to our members for feedback. We do this so that if we are moving in a wrong direction with a product we can learn about our mistakes early and then adjust our direction before wasting unnecessary time and resources.

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